Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Spanish bracero ‘laborer’.

Examples

They then took a crew of illegal "wetbacks," what they called bracero laborers from Mexico back in those days, out into these pecan orchards and they "thrashed" the nuts out of the trees with long bamboo poles, the nuts falling onto large canvases spread under the trees.

A fact for Eric K, using a distinction between “immigrant” and the Bush approach toward workers as economic units, rather than people: from 1942-1964, we had agricultural guestworkers in what was called the bracero program.

One interesting sidelight - some of the guys I know working here in Northern CA use their father's SS cards granted during one of the "bracero" type periods and eventually the family does collect benefits.